CONTINUITY MONTAGE (DW Griffith)
Theory of montage:
Putting together shots to make a more interesting visual language.
Montage = assembly of shots
End of WWI
Russia impoverished and
after the end of WWI 160 million people
Film means of mass communication
pre-revolutionary cinema was a capitalist cinema- filmmakers were driven out
New cinema committee was created as well as a new film school
founded in 1919.
The world's first film school.
Newsreels were to be used to support the new regime- agitation and propaganda = agitprop
people also wanted to study film
Lev Kuleshov- was pre-revolutionary filmmaker who shot newsreels during the long civil war
He was allowed to set up his own workshop with students to study film.
INTOLERANCE- movie by DW Griffith was made in 1916 and was fascinating to the Russians who deconstructed the editing style and the shots themselves in order to understand film language.
Kuleshov Effect- alternating shots of the identical expressionless face between three other shots reveals that the shot of different objects will impact the way the audience interprets the
the meaning of film emerges not only from spatial composition but also
through the order or arrangement of the shots
CREATIVE GEOGRAPHY (viewer constructs geography themselves as they are guided by the arrangement of shots)
Film transcends space and time-= film is born in the edit
MONTAGE- from French verb monter = assemble
Sergei Eisenstein was a student at the school; considered a peer with Griffith who developed continuity and theatrical impact. Eisenstein used an intellectual approach to build ideas.
"Battleship Potemkin" the film was pure propaganda
DIALECTICAL CINEMA--> Thesis--> antithesis --> Synthesis
(Marxist dialectic) image of state--> image of people rising up --> suppression by state
Suppression by the state --> helplessness (shot of vulnerable) --> brutal oppression
kinds of MONTAGE
METRIC MONTAGE (duration of cut)
RHYTHMIC MONTAGE
TONAL MONTAGE
OVERTONAL MONTAGE (how sequences play against each other)
IDEOLOGICAL MONTAGE (expresses abstract ideas by posing relationships)
(in Potemkin- the lions, priests and soldiers)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=10&v=OA-F9hNk2jI
Suprematism Kapital from Cristiano Lopes Cabral on Vimeo.
DW Griffith made films starting in 1908. Although we know him best for the racist film Birth of a Nation (1915), he had already developed many of the strategies about how to shoot and cut in order to create a realistic world. Some of the things he developed include the 180 degree rule and matching eyelines.
https://vimeo.com/170027565
Collage
http://www.othercinema.com/otherzine/on-collage-grabbing-the-jackalope-by-the-antl-ears/
